Wrong Holdings

Wrong Holdings occur when a city or church is ruled over by a Baron (who may also be a Count/Duke/King/Emperor) instead of a Mayor or Bishop respectively. This usually happens immediately upon conquering new lands from infidels (when conquering people of your own religion, the existing mayors and bishops can be held over) which results in the lands and all holdings being added to the demesne of the victorious claimant.

This screenshot shows several expected results of the conquest of a new county.

Wrong Holding alert – This lets you know that the character you are currently playing currently has a city of church in his demesne.

Demesne too large alert – This lets you know that you have exceeded the maximum size demesne that your character can support without penalties.

Demesne size – Shows ‘current demesne size / maximum demesne size.’ The current demesne size will be listed in red when larger than the maximum, to indicate that the player is incurring penalties.

Tooltip for the Wrong Holding alert – Kindly letting you know exactly which holdings in your demesne are the wrong type.

Message notifying you that your leader in now the Baron of a new holding. Upon conquering a county for yourself, you will get a message for the county you have conquered, as well as for each holding after the first in that county (unless, of course, you have adjusted your message settings).

Why Wrong Holdings are Usually Bad

Wrong Holdings have their incomes heavily penalized – a whopping 75%.

The Wrong Holding penalty in action. Oof.

This money is simply lost, where as if you had a correct vassal in place, you may make less money, but the vassal profits, and some of these profits will be re-invested back into the holding.

Wrong Holdings that are not county capitals are counted as Baronies, which only add .o25 prestige/month, for the calculation of prestige gain. Dropping a Wrong Holding barony for a county will cost the same as far as demesne limit, but will earn .975 additional prestige/month.

Fixing Wrong Holdings (non-capital)

These alerts are very easily dealt with, if you know where to find the buttons. In the tooltip for the Wrong Holding alert, it says that you can click to cycle through the list, but doing so takes you to the title pane, and i don’t think (i may be wrong) that you can fix the wrong holding from there. The first thing we want to do is go to the Holdings pane by clicking on the newly acquired county. In our example, that is Cagliari.

Cagliari, with Wrong Holdings for both the city and the church.

Without looking at the tooltip, we can tell that the city and church are Wrong Holdings simply by looking at the Coats of Arms. If the Coat of Arms at the top left and top right are the same, then the Count owns the holdings. To fix this, we will take the tooltip’s advice, and right click to interact.

Right-clicking on the holding brings up three menu options, one of which is "Create new vassal."

When we right click on a Wrong Holding, we will get three new menu options, allowing us to raise a levy, raise a navy, and, most importantly right now, create a new vassal. We want to select create new vassal in the bottom left. You can also get to the “Create New Vassal” button by left-clicking on the Wrong Holding, and selecting it on the city/church’s details pane, highlited in the screenshot below.

The Create New Vassal button (with the text arrow pointing to it) on the holding details pane.

Once you have clicked on “Create New Vassal,” you will see a new Coat of Arms at the top left of the holding.

The Wrong Holding is fixed, Hooray!

Et, voila! You have now set up a Mayor, and a Bishop, to rule in the selected holdings, this will lower your demesne count by two, which in our example above brings us within our demesne limit as well. Both alerts will now disappear, and we can get on with conquering the rest of the world, knowing that holdings will only be wrong on purpose from this day forward.

Fixing Wrong Holdings (capital)

Some counties’ main holdings are not castles but cities or churches. Venice and Genoa are examples of counties with cities as their capital, Rome and Nice are two counties with Churches as their main holdings. If you conquer a county that doesn’t have a castle as its capital, you have a few options.

Maintain ownership, and eat the Wrong Holding penalty.

Pass the county to a vassal, who will then suffer the Wrong Holding penalty himself, or will appoint another lesser vassal if they are a Duke and able to do so.

Pass ownership to someone with no current holdings. This person will fill the role assigned, and no one will be penalized.

Switch the main holding to a castle. (Thanks to Eric for tipping me to this in the comments.) Unfortunately, this is not as simple as pressing a button. If you have taken a county which has a city or church as a main holding, and also has a castle built, you can keep the castle for yourself (or revoke the title from the current holder). When the month changes, the castle will become the primary holding, and you can then grant the city to a mayor, while keeping / granting the County by means of the castle instead. Along these same lines, counties that start with no castle built at all will switch to have it as the main holding once one is built.

Genoa, with the castle as the main holding. Roger here had to revoke the Barony, but at the start of the next month, the castle had replaced the city as the main holding. (you can tell from the conquest penalty icons.)

3 Responses to “Wrong Holdings”

If you take a county like Venice or Rome, keep the county seat and a castle barony. I don’t remember how much time it took, but it was near immediately, the game swapped the county seat with the castle, and I was then free to give away the wrong holding, but keep the county for myself.

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